Big Catch-Up 1-2020 to 3-2020

January of 2020 has found us in an above normal warm, wet weather pattern.  So much so that we are having tropical-like rain and occasional storm conditions that would make you think it was late spring.

Good-size branches turned spear.

We had one of those spring time storms visit us in the first third of January.  Torrential rain and howling straight winds plowed through the Allatoona Lake area late in the afternoon and did a number on a slew of trees.  The Volunteer Village was not spared.  There were large branches separated from their trees and whole trees snapped off 10 to 15 feet above ground.

Snapped off high up.

This tree, in the center island of the The Village loop, held firm at the roots but succumbed to the wind's force at a week spot high up.

It was a tall, spindly pine and the part that broke off stretched across the island, over the road and into the trees on the opposite side.  Chainsaws were on it in a matter of minutes and the road was usable again.  But nerves were still a little frayed for the volunteer who's rig the tree fell so close to that she felt the ground shake.

If the road blockage had been all there was to it, all would have been well.  But this tree also fell across our sole source of electric power and shredded a three hundred yard stretch of power lines.  Usually one does not find a three hundred yard stretch between power poles but I guess the installers decided it would be okay to make that kind of jump to the terminating pole.  Regardless, our power lines were a mess and we were without power and were told it was going to stay that way for at least a couple of days as trees had taken down power all over north Georgia.  Power crews were coming in from far and wide to handle the work load.

For seven years we have managed our power needs during blackouts with the big battery bank (four large six-volt AGMs, weighing nearly 500 lbs) we had built into our rig.  If we lost shore power we simply dropped back to our 12-volt system and waited for the power to come back on.  If we were relatively sure that it would be less than a day we would also turn on the inverter and power up the satellite receiver and big screen TV.  All this worked well and good unless environmental control was needed.  If it was hot weather, air conditioning was not an option.  The inverter was big but not that big.  If heat was needed, that system was all 12-volt, so other than putting a pretty significant drain on the batteries to run the furnace blower we could manage for a couple of days at low temperature settings.  However we did have to turn the inverter on at night to power both our CPAP machines.

In February of 2016 we ran into just that situation.  The remote region of the country we were in had a system wide outage and it lasted days.  Our batteries did well but they can only last so long and it was cold.  We had a couple of uncomfortable nights where layering up and sleeping semi-vertical (no power for the CPAP machines so being as close to vertical as possible was the only way to sleep) was the new normal.

Cyndee wrapped up like a burrito, braced for a cold night.

We've had numerous power outages since, all multi-hour until now.  Once again we face needing to be in off-grid mode for an unknown number of days.  And again it is February.  And now that the storm has passed we are supposed to return to "normal" cold temperatures at night.  So after seven years this is the straw that broke the camel's back, we're buying a generator.

Nothing fancy mind you, just big enough to add charge to the batteries.  A Honda i2200 should do the trick.  It's quiet, light enough I can move it one-handed and has a small footprint, taking up very little space in the bed of the truck when stored.  And it is good, clean power, I won't have to worry about damaging electronics with "dirty" electricity.  After an $1,100 trip to Camping World we had bagged our quarry and were set up and running.  The only thing that could be considered inconvenient is the need to acquire ethanol-free gasoline.  Fortunately there are couple of local gas stations that have it, for a price.

The generator works great, it charges the batteries faster than we are using them.  Looks like we will be sleeping horizontally and have enough power to also operate the electric blanket. Woohoo!

About 56 hours later we had a contract power crew pull into The Village and two hours after that we were back to full shore power.  Our new generator used exactly one full tank of gas (1.9 gal) to keep us powered up while the grid was down.  Not bad.

As mentioned earlier, the damage was pretty wide-spread.  Locally, in addition to The Village, a neighboring campground, McKaskey Creek Campground, was hit even harder.  Here a whole stand of mixed soft and hardwoods were completely laid down.

All roads in the campground had multiple trees laying across them.  Some campsites had railings and picnic tables crushed by the fallen trees.

All in all the rough count was 45 trees had gone down. In the photo above the main road in the campground is under all that timber.  By and large these trees went down by having their root balls pulled out of the ground.

For the trees that had deep roots, the wind simply snapped the tree off at its base.

January leveled out weather-wise and we got back to our routine, albeit in a raincoat because it rained what seemed like every day.  With things back to normal and being in the slow season we decided to take some days and do a train trip to Washington, DC.

From Atlanta, Amtrak offers a choice of one train to travel between the former and Washington.  It departs in the evening and travels all night, arriving at its destination the next morning, both ways.  Cyndee had made this exact trip with the Girl Scouts 20+ years ago and I had spent my entire career traveling long distances between hemispheres.  We both knew what traveling all night would be like, or so we thought.  It is amazing how age changes things.  Neither of us could get comfortable enough to sleep more than a few minutes at a time and by the time we arrived we both felt as if we had been beaten with a phone book.  Regardless, we were still amped up about being in the capital.

With it being February we were definitely in town during the off-season.  For the most part we had the place to ourselves except during rush hour.  We did have to work our schedule around sites we wanted to see that were operating on a scaled back schedule for the winter but we did get to everything we wanted to.

Of course there was no way we were going to miss the main attractions on the National Mall.  Here's a few highlights:

Notice that bright blue sky?  Washington was having record-breaking warm weather for the first week of February.

See how the mall is devoid of people?  We seemed to hit town at the peak of off-season, plus Super Bowl Sunday, plus State of the Union Address and also the early days of the realization we were on our way to a serious problem with a virus pandemic.

The Lincoln Memorial never fails to impress.

I was taken with the shear beauty of the Lincoln sculpture.  The details, drape of his clothes, pose of his hands, everything was so exquisite to me.

For Cyndee and I the Korean War Memorial was most haunting.  We lingered here and observed from many different angles for quite awhile.

A detour across the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery was worth the extra effort.

And speaking of extra effort, we had to rent a car (everything done up till now was on the hop-on, hop-off trolley) and navigate our way in the direction of Dulles Airport to get to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Annex.  That was definitely worth the extra effort.

Three of my top ten favorite aircraft were on display at this location.

Space Shuttle Discovery

Space Shuttle Discovery.  Looking up her skirt.

SR-71 Blackbird

Corsair

But the party is over, it is time to get back on the train and get to Atlanta.  And just in time too, the weather is turning ugly quick.  We are getting rain back in the forecast and it looks like the whole East Coast is going to get it.

And it does.  It rained buckets all night long from Washington to Atlanta.  Going through towns with enough light you should have been able to see buildings and other structures, but not this night.  About all we could make out was the red glow of the crossing signals.

Arriving in Atlanta the rain was coming down in sheets, getting us and our luggage the short distance to our car shouldn't have been a big deal but it looked like we might as well have gone swimming in our clothes and used the luggage for floats.

And that rain continued for days until a cold front came through and pushed it out only to be replaced by snow.

The Village under a light blanket of snow.

 While enjoying the winter scene I noticed a turkey making its way out of the woods and into The Village.  Didn't think much of it being alone, it is not that unusual.

But moments later about a dozen more came slowly walking out of the woods, all pecking and scratching their way through the campground.

I guess that first turkey was a scout.  And a lookout too, it never did do any foraging, it just kept walking a patrol and scouting for danger.

February was a month of mostly rain, as was January.  North Georgia is breaking records of all kinds concerning rain; most days in a row with rain, largest amount in a single day, largest amount in a month for both Jan and Feb and so on.  Lakes north of Interstate-20 are seeing levels well above summer full pool and their downstream rivers are running so high that the lakes cannot release water without causing severe flooding in river communities.

 All campgrounds on Allatoona Lake are at least partially flooded.  We are approaching the scheduled opening day for campgrounds but from our experience with last year's flooding debris, we realize we probably will not have everything back to a usable state in time.

For now the only ones able to enjoy the campgrounds are the ducks.

After about another week of rain (light compared to previous weeks)  we finally got a break in the weather and river levels dropped enough to allow release of water from the dam.

Last year when the release was done it was all spillway gates opened just a little bit.  This year it was every other gate opened more.  It makes for a nice picture but being at the bottom of the dam was impressive.  The roar of the water was heard at great distance and you could feel the power of the water rushing down the spillway.

When word got out that a release was being done spectators showed up in droves, and for good reason.  This was an event not often seen.

Turns out that getting the lake levels down so that we could open campgrounds by mid-March was the least of our worries.  The covid-19 pandemic has taken hold and all things now revolve around it.  At first we volunteers were to just stop doing any activities that engaged the public but in just a couple of days after that announcement we were told to cease all activities and to shelter in place until further notice.